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Rock and a Hard Place by: Rebecca Wrigley

If
you were going to pick one of her biggest pet peeves about the Zombie
Apocalypse, thought Jane, it would have to be the smell. She never
ventured outside without a cloth tied around her lower face to filter
out some if not all of it. Everything rotted without electricity or
people to store it properly. Of course all the dead flesh wandering
around was rotting. It all stank enough to make your gorge rise.
She’d even had to stuff the cracks in her windows and doors to keep
it out, which made for a different stink – the stale air unwashed
body and clothing funk. Unavoidable once running water had become a
fond memory. Things had gotten pretty funky in general in the last
five years.

She
stared out of her third floor apartment window at the trash strewn
street below. Cars sat where they’d spun out, driver’s ripped
from their seats, or smashed into one another. Some had just rolled
off to the curbs. It had been rush hour when the thing hit Jane’s
part of the city. And just to be clear, it wasn’t a Zombie
Apocalypse exactly. Zombies originated from Hatian beliefs and they
were supposed to be dead people brought back to life to serve their
Bocour, to do whatever he said – basically cheap manual labor. No
human flesh eating involved there. Whatever was wandering around on
the streets outside of Jane’s apartment definitely did, to the
exclusion of everything else. She’d begun calling them The
Canibalistic Undead, or CUD for short.

The
variety of them was different too. Jane had grown up with the films
where they had been either fast or slow. But now they seemed to age.
When they were fresh they moved quickly, but no more quickly than
they could in life and less so if they were damaged in some
locomotive way. When they were a little on the off side they started
to creak a bit but their reflexes remained fairly good and a they had
a firm grip, these could still be dangerous on their own. The wasted
Zombie was a shuffler, slow, usually missing appendages by then, but
in numbers they could cut off your escape and take you down in a
horrible inching death. She’d once seen a CUD lose a leg simply by
breaking down. Its tendons and cartelage must have finally dried out
and snapped a long time ago. She had no idea how long it had been
dragging the useless apendage. It must have been hanging by a few
ligaments that gave up one at a time until the CUD fell to the ground
and, without pause, began crawling.

Jane
had seen pretty much every kind of mistake made by screaming
survivors from her window. She’d always wanted to call down and
warn them, but inevitably, she hadn’t. Logically it would only have
drawn the survior’s attention away from the danger, ensuring their
death. But, more importantly, and this made her shudder, it would
call attention to herself and her apartment. The only reason she had
survived the first few weeks of the Apocalypse was that she’d
missed most of it.

Twenty
seven, Jane had a night job as an advice nurse at St. Jude’s. She’d
worked some extra hours and swapped some holiday time with a
co-worker to have a whole week off. The plan was to sleep, play video
games, read comics, and eat junk food for seven days. She’d been
careful not to tell her parents about this little vacation. So that’s
what she was doing when it all hit the fan. Behind her double paned
windows with the airconditioning on and the TV switched to X-Box, she
was completely oblivious. The Zombies didn’t seem to master the art
of climbing stairs so no one had come knocking. Her neighbors on the
third floor gradually disappeared, going out to forage for food or
weapons and failing to return. Jane missed that too.

Somewhere
around day five, she wanted to go out for some Chinese. She went to
the window to check on her car which should have been parked on the
curb below. That’s when the newsflash hit. Jane turned on the TV
and got a lot of static. She checked the radio and finally got an
emergency broadcast about going to your nearest shelter. Like she
knew where that was. But the weiredest part was the warning. That the
dead were regenerating, running around and eating the living. Worse,
bites could spread the disease from the dead to the living. They
weren’t sure of other disease dispersal vectors such as insects and
animal bites but bites from the regenerated dead were absolutely
gauranteed.

That
first day, Jane made a careful inventory of her cupboards and
refrigerator/freezer. It did not look promising. She had a lot of
Hamberger Helper meals with maybe a quarter pound of iffy looking
hamberger left in the fridge to cook it with. There were lots of
Kraft Macaroni and Cheese boxes (not very nutritious -- no real
protein there). A couple of Chef Boyardee meat ravioli cans (score!).
Some cream cheese growing mold, and half a bag of hard bagles. The
rest she’d been polishing off for days now. Scoop-up Fritos,
spinach dip, Hostess chocolate cupcakes, grilled tuna melts on rye
with pickles, Dijorno Hawaiian pizza. Drifts of candybar wrappers lay
over all of it, Twix, Kit Kat, Butterfinger… All the food she could
have saved if she’d known what wad going on.

Then
she came to some hard conclusions. She was going to have to go out
and forage. And she was going to have to arm herself to fight those
CUDs. Because she was going to have to fight them at some point. Jane
started by looting the empty third floor apartments. Unfortunately,
others had been there before her. Even the emergency fire axe was
missing from it’s shattered glass case. At last she found a child’s
baseball bat under a bed. It made her want to weep but it was was
heavy, solid wood inspite of its size. And she told herself she’d
only need it until she could get to the hardware store down the
street or the sportingoods store further away on Fifth and Pearl. She
had decided to make body armor out of strips of matress padding when
she recalled that the kid in 1D on the ground floor took Tae Kwon Do.
She was small and thin, she might be able to fit into his stuff if it
was still there.

She
tied on some padding with rags just in case and ventured down the
stairwell. Her building was enclosed with a locked glass door at the
front of the stairs and first floor apartment entryway. Likewise
there was a locked back door leading to the alleyway behind the
building. She hadn’t gone down the stairs since the Apocalypse and
nothing had come up but she had no way of knowing if anything had
come in.

Jane
crept down to the last few steps. More and more deposits of useless
but much loved things lay abandoned on her way. Photos, stuffed
animals, snowglobes, worn out slippers, a single earring. She heard
nothing but her own footsteps. As she made contact with the first
floor a loud BANG and rattle threw a scream out of her. Jane had been
looking at the hallway of apartments, preparing herself for any
occupants that might be of the CUD variety. This had come from behind
her. She swung around, whipping the little baseball bat like a
policeman’s batton. A CUD stood directly infront of her, repeatedly
smacking itself against the outside glass of the front door. She
didn’t like the look of that, not just the viscous black and gray
fluids smearing the glass, or the torn skin revealing muscle tissue
as green-black as spoiled steak; but the repetion. It was thick glass
but how much of that could it take?

Jane
decided time was now a factor. She padded as quietly but quickly as
possible down to apartment 1D. She’d still had electricity then so
the hall light made things a little easier. Unlike the other
apartments 1D was locked.

“Crap!”
said Jane, “You have got
to be shitting me!” She could still hear the thumping from the
front entrance.

Jane
whirled and race-walked to the super’s office. The keys were on a
peg board behind a large wooden desk. That’s why she didn’t see
Mr. Sudakis at first. She felt pressure on her ankle as she stepped
around the desk. Jane looked down and recognized him, or some of him
lying under the desk. The top half. From his armpits down he was
ribcage and muscle, loops of instestines and gristle. Just this last
Christmas she’d given Sudakis a nice bottle of California rosé.
Now his hand was fastened on Jane’s ankle and before she could
react he bit down on her calf. She could feel the indents of his
teeth through her padding and screamed. Then she started whaling on
his head with the bat like it was a pinata at a birthday party. He
must have been decaying for quite a while because his head didn’t
stand up to the beating. It looked like a pulped orange when Jane was
through. Apparently there really was a first time for everything.

She
shook with adrenaline but now was not the time to lose one’s shit.
Now was the time to get the key and get down to business. Jane didn’t
bother to scrape off the bat, she just checked her padding for tears
and then took off for 1D. The door scraped open onto a stale smelling
entry/living room just like hers. It was empty but the furniture
looked untouched, unlooted. Checking the kitchen and bathroom briefly
yeilded no one and no CUDs. Unlike her apartment, this was a two
bedroom. Both doors were open. Finally she entered the master
bedroom. On the floor in one corner she found a frumpy matron
slumped, both arms laid out in a suplicant posture, one vertical
slice in each wrist and dark maroon stains that spread wide around
each. On the wall written in more of the maroon stuff was “Please
forgive me.”

Jane
turned away, taking in the rest of the room, trying to obliterate the
image. She’d talked with that woman on a number of occasions.
That’s how she’d known about the kid’s Tae Kwon Do. Jane was
suddenly afraid to check the next bedroom. Would she find another
suicide? Maybe an “assisted” suicide?

But
the Tae Kwon Do gear would be in the kid’s room. She went in bat
raised, made a full sweep of the floor and corners. No bodies. She
even checked behind the door. Nothing. No writing on the wall either.
And no Tae Kwon Do gear. Closet then. Jane opened it up and found the
gear. The kid was wearing it, drooling black goo and sporting a week
old pent up funk.

“Well
shit,” said Jane. She raised her bat. She needed that gear. In the
end it really came down to this, CUDs don’t remember anything they
used to know in their lives before (like Tae Kwon Do let’s say),
and those odds n’ ends drawers often hold such useful weapons as
heavy duty screwdrivers which can be thrust directly into the brain
through an eye socket. Jane wiped off the screwdriver and would
forever keep it on her person in the future.

With
a little sqeezing she fit into the sixteen-year-old’s Tae Kwon Do
gear. Built of heavy duty vynil stretched over thickly packed
synthetic padding, there were a pair of full forearm gaurds, a pair
of jabbing mitts, a full torso guard with shoulder epaulets, and a
helmet that drew tight around the face. There were also a pair of
thick plastic shin gaurds which she opted to combine with the
mattress padding. She kept her own shoes. Tae Kwon Do footwear tended
towards the open-toed. Armed with just the bat and the screwdriver,
she checked all the other apartments for weapons but came up empty.
It was time to go out.

Now
the only grocery store that still had canned items within a two mile
radius of her apartment was well flanked by empty cars, a plus. But
it was several blocks away from her home, a definite minus. Suited up
in her padding, weilding a machette she’d discovered stuck in a
still twiching CUD’s head, and wearing a tool belt that carried her
screwdriver, a hammer, a whet stone, a can opener, a flash light, and
a magnesium fire starter, she cased the store. Jane hated foraging,
hated going this far out again. But she was low on canned and dry
goods. She could only take so much with her each time in the pack
straped to her back. It wasn’t like she could roll a cart back to
her apartment.

The
ocasional CUD shuffled past the storefront. Jane crawled into a car
with both its doors partially open. From there, she lowered herself
behind the next car one width closer. There was another car jogged
just a step further with a tiny gap she had to move through quickly
and low to the ground. She made it in a single hunched stride.
Finally, from here she could take her usual route. There was a car
that had smashed into the storefront itself. Luckily for Jane it was
a big cab truck with a bit more clearance off the ground than most
cars. She lowered herself to the ground and slithered under the
vehicle and into the store, this was the hardest part because of the
tool belt dragging beneath her. She had to take it slow and easy not
to make any loud noises.

Jane
had long ago covered the glass windows and doors with news paper and
duct tape. It kept the CUDs from seeing movement inside the store and
banging on the glass to get in – a lesson she’d learned by doing
the same for her apartment building entrance. It was amazing how easy
it was to manipulate them if you had half a brain cell. She emerged
into the murky gray light now and went straight for the stuff she
wanted. Jane checked under aisle shelves first. There was a can of
pea soup stuck under a shelf on one aisle. On another there was a can
of strained tomatoes. Then there was a stack of dog food cans left
on a shelf completely untouched. She’d been saving these for last
resort. She stuck several in her pack now. Unaware, she swallowed
saliva that swelled in her mouth. Preapapocalypic Jane would have
been shocked. That Jane was used to having a mocha latte java with an
extra shot at the Starbucks in the St. Jude’s Cafeteria. That Jane
would never have needed to eat dog food or know how to use a
screwdriver as a deadly weapon.

She
found a few bags of dry pasta under the lip of the dairy aisle shelf
with rats chewing on them. The market was infested. She’d done her
best to transport drygoods first but she obviously had missed a few.
Jane used her machette and screwdriver to pry the rats off and threw
the rescued bounty in her pack too.

She
moved deeper into the market, the shadows were longer here, blacker.
She put the pack on both shoulders to free her hands, doubled them on
the machette handle, and proceeded with more caution. There was a
back entrance to the store. She’d secured it months ago but you
never knew. A shadow passed in the corner of her vision. Jane turned
to varify but saw nothing. Rats? She turned the next corner.

A
silohuette at the front of the aisle brought her flashlight up and
on. It was a fresh one so its head rotated smoothly in her direction.
The ripped strands of muscle and tendons in his throat stretched and
squelched as it moved. The eyes were clear. His clothes mostly soaked
with his own wet blood. The only thing that identified him as a CUD
was the fact that he was standing and moving around with his throat
opened up like a Christmas goose.

Jane
gritted her teeth. Facing was better than running if it was just one.
Running put your back to them which made you vulnerable. That was all
the time she had for assesment. It was on. She immediately dropped
the flashlight. The CUD was racing for her. He was an average middle
class male, a little paunchy, and his injury didn’t interfere with
his legs or arms. This was going to be fun.

She
planted her feet firmly, hands doubled on her machette handle again,
raised her arms slightly and seconds before he met her body, she
brought the blade down into his skull. Her arms vibrated with the
blow. Jane had known to strike her hardest. Fresh CUDs had strong
skulls, not like the ones that had been rotting for a while. His eyes
rolled up into his head as though trying to see the machette lodged
there. She blew out a breath of pent up anxiety. It almost felt
anticlimactic.

Jane
pulled on her machette but it wouldn’t come out. She tried to
wiggle it but it wasn’t budging. That’s when she felt pressure on
her left shoulder. She wrenched away and around trailing a thin rope
of gray saliva from the CUD that had bitten into her Tae Kwon Do
shoulder padding. It was a shuffler but it was close and her machette
was useless at the moment. She’d screwed up. She hadn’t been
paying attention. Always remain aware, even after a kill. Especially
after a kill. Where there was one to kill there might be more to take
you down. Jane reached for her screwdriver and – Suddenly a short
arrow looking thing sprouted in the CUD’s forehead. It dropped to
the floor and Jane turned slowly, screwdriver at the ready,
instinctively swooping down to grab her flashlight.

Behind
her, behind the CUD she’d hacked with her machette stood a tall
figure in in thick leather biker’s gear with football padding
strapped on. It wore an enclosed motorcycle helmet and weilded a
crossbow stocked with more of the same arrows.

The
figure reached a leather gloved hand to its visor and popped it up.
“Hi, I’m Phil. You OK?” a pale face squinting in the light
appeared.

Jane
was staring at the first living man she’d seen in over three years
– if you counted the ones she’d seen from her window. She nodded
violently, unable to make words in her head.

“You
can put that away,” said Phil, “I promise not to shoot you.”

Jane
realized she still held the screwdriver at stabbing height and slid
it back into her tool belt.

Phil
shook his head and blew out a low whistle. “You’re the first
living person I’ve seen since this thing hit. Or you would be if I
weren’t completely blind right now.”

“Oh!”
Jane lowered the flashlight “Sorry.”

In
the softer light she could see that his face was remarkably clean,
not even any stubble. He looked so civilized it made her want to cry.

“Look,
I want to talk and figure this out but not here.” Phil gestured at
the two dead CUDs with his crossbow.

Jane
swallowed and nodded her agreement.

“I’ve
got transport and a secure location. Are you in?”

“Yeah.”
Then she kicked at the handle of her machette to free the blade from
the CUD’s skull.

“You
can leave it,” said Phil. “I’ve got plenty of these and I never
miss,” he patted his crossbow arrows.

Jane
hesitated for a moment, then, a little ashamed of her vulgar need,
gave a couple more kicks, the machette clattered to the floor and she
scooped it up. Phil led her to the back entrance where it looked like
he’d cut through her chains with a bolt cutter. She didn’t
mention it, seemed moot. Everybody did it these days.

He
snapped his visor down, cracked the door and then popped it wide.
“Good to go. Let’s go fast.”

Jane
followed cautiously and found Phil holding the passenger side door of
a Humvee open for her. Holy
shit!

She
wasn’t stupid enough to stand and gawk. Jane leapt in, shut the
door and fastened her safety belt. By then Phil had jumped aboard and
was strapping himself in. Before starting the engine, which would
draw CUDs from everywhere. He leaned over and flipped open a
compartment in front of Jane. He took out an energy bar and held it
out to her.

“Hungry?”

Jane
looked at him as if he were from outer space. Then she grabbed the
bar and opened the wrapper with her teeth. As she was spitting out
the plastic she said “Thank you.”

The
Humvee pulled into a hospital. St. Jude’s actually. Phil drove it
toward the equipment loading dock alley. At the mouth he stopped, and
without a word, jumped out. Jane was left siting in the passenger
seat with her mouth open. Phil darted toward a line of junk strung
across the alley entrance. He put down two CUDs in the process. He
dragged a series of objects out of line, to the sides, then hopped
back into the Humvee. Phil was breathing a little faster but
otherwise he seemed calm. The Humvee pulled through the narrow slot
between the removed junk and Jane could see that they weren’t piles
of junk, they were bear traps, balls of razor wire weighted to two by
fours, palates with large iron spikes driven up through them… As
soon as they were through, Phil did the same in reverse, reforming
the defense barrier.

“Makes
getting in and out of the Hummer a lot easier,” said Phil. “At
first, they got caught on them and I had to clean out the remains
two, sometimes four times a day. Then it was like they started to
veer off, like they learned or somehow passed the word that this
place was bad news.”

“Wait,”
said Jane, “you think they can learn?”

Phil
shrugged as he pulled into the loading dock. “Maybe, in a
rudimentary way.”

Wonderful,
thought Jane, it just
gets better and better.

He
stepped out with his crossbow drawn, checked the undercarriage and
the area around the Humvee. When he made it to Jane’s door he
opened it and motioned her out. “Stay tight with me. I’ve sealed
off most of the hospital to make it defendable, but it’s still easy
to get lost if you don’t know it.”

She
thought about mentioning that she used to work at the hospital but
then discarded the idea as stupid. It would have come out lame too
she was sure.

“What
about CUDs?” she asked without thinking.

Phil
was busy unlocking a heavy chain but he looked up. “See-You-Dees?”

Jane
flushed; at least she knew she was dirty enough that it wouldn’t
show. “I just call them that,” she pointed out towards the
creatures roaming outside the alley. “Stands for Cannibalistic
Undead.”

Phil
nodded her toward the door he held open. “I like that,” his voice
sounded like he was smiling. “CUDs.” They passed through and he
used the same chain and lock to secure the door from the inside. Jane
noticed he had a thick ring of keys. There
must be a lot of chained doors like this,
she thought. “No, I cleaned the place out when I got here. Then I
sealed off a defendable portion, locked it down, and marked off the
dead-end doors with spray paint. Of course I made sure to include the
generator in the sealed off section.”

“A
generator?”
She’d forgotten about the genny in the basement. He must have
started it up.

Phil
nodded his helmeted head and gave a muffled laugh. “Pretty sweet,
yeah?”

She
wheezed an expletive.

“There’s
an artesian well piped to this place too so we’ve got running
water.”

That
was total news to her. Halleluiah.

He
began to lead her through a twisting maze of corridors. A lot of the
chained doors had large black spray-painted X’s on them. Some of
them were simply numbered. Some of the walls bore post-Apocalyptic
graffiti, sad desperate vulgarity. All of it passed in a blur as Phil
chatted with her about her experience of the Apocalypse until now.
She was trying to split her concentration between taking in her
surroundings and on not giving up too much information about herself
and where she lived. She liked Phil so far but she wasn’t sure she
wanted him showing up at her apartment three days from now at two in
the morning with his crossbow in hand. He told her about his
stockpile of weapons and ammunition (enough to see him through the
next century), the gas and propane he was set with for power and
cooking into the foreseeable future, all food he had stocked, mostly
MREs. Everything under lock and key, and he patted his pocket where
they jingled.

Abruptly
they came to a set of double doors and stopped. Phil pulled the keys
out and unlocked the chain. He swung open one of the doors and
ushered Jane through into a large well-lit room she recognized as an
OR. He didn’t bother to lock the door behind them. It was a wide
room with several gurneys pushed around randomly. At least one, she
noticed, was heaped with tarped equipment. The walls were painted a
pale surgical blue.

Phil
pulled off his helmet and set it down. His crossbow he propped gently
beside it on the same gurney.

Jane
felt as if she’d been gut punched. He had sweat-dampened blond hair
that would probably fall in perfect brief waves around his chiseled
features. And he had the ice blue eyes of a Nordic god. She was
completely out of her depth here.

“Jane?”

“Mmm.”

“You
all right?”

Ha.
“Yeah, sure.”

“Good,”
he smiled and his teeth were perfect too. “Thought I’d lost you
there for a moment.”

She
smiled weakly. “Nope still here.”

“This
is fantastic,” he laughed, “a real live human being after all
this! You think we’re the last?”

“I
don’t know,” said Jane. “ I never thought I’d see anyone
again.”

“You
have no idea how grateful I am to see you Jane.”

“Oh,
I think I can take a pretty good guess,” she countered, a little
cautiously. He might have gone a little nutty with the isolation. Who
knew?

“And
you seem capable, reasonably intelligent, healthy, and best of all a
real survivor. So much more than I could have hoped for.”

Jane
stiffened a bit. “Yeah, you seem swell too. Maybe we should take
some time to get to know each other though.” She was starting to
think about that locked entrance door and where the keys were.

“See,”
he said moving toward the equipment lumped gurney, “my work before
the Apocalypse was something that required a certain element that is
in short supply, has vanished really, since.” He rolled the gurney
over to the center of the room. With a bit of a flourish he removed
the tarp.

And
Jane really wished he hadn’t.

Underneath
was a CUD, strapped down to a gurney that was tilted up. Straps held
down the head, wrists, thighs, and ankles. Pieces of it were missing.
Not in the normal way that CUDs lost pieces, in rips and shreds, well
there were those too. But these were surgical removals. A leg cleanly
severed with some sort of bone saw. Skin partitioned off in squares
like a sick muscular chess board. Part of its brain was exposed and
scoops had been taken out. Jane gagged. She wasn’t sure if it was
at the CUD in general or its condition.

“I
know, they’re foul. But they’re all I have to work with these
days,” sighed Phil. “The real problem is that they don’t fight
back or scream for mercy. Their only interest is in eating you and if
they’re tied down they just drool and bite incessantly. They’re
such a disapointment after so many years of…” he trailed off with
a blissfull look on his face.

Something
cold flipped in Jane’s stomach.

“I’ve
got a whole room of them next door,” he pouted. All of them
failures. They have no will to live, so they have no fear of death. I
supose because they’re already dead.” He turned back to Jane (who
wanted to crawl under a gurney). “But you, Jane, you’re something
else!”

Shitshitshitshitshit,
thought Jane.

“You’re
the real deal. I didn’t think I was ever going to see one of you
again. We are going to have so much fun!”

“I’d
rather not, Phil,” Jane said hopelessly.

“That’s
disappointing,” he sighed. “This is how it works, You get to keep
your tools, and
you get a headstart. Isn’t that fair? Then I hunt you. Whoever
survives, wins. Of course if I win I won’t kill you right away.”

Jane
shuddered. This would teach her to follow home guys she met in
postapocalyptic supermarkets. He hadn’t been there to forage for
food. He’d been looking for fresh CUDs and got lucky finding her.

Phil
made a quick lunge around the gurney toward her and she nearly fell
backward. “Let’s play Jane!”

Jane
shook her head.

“Not
an option. I’ll take you down right here if you don’t go.” He
reached over and hefted his crossbow easily, bringing it to bear on
her in one smooth arc.

She
felt herself backing up until the double doors smacked her shoulders.

“You
can turn and run, Jane,” said Phil. “I promised you a headstart.
That means no shooting. You’ve got five minutes.”

She
had no reason to trust him so she didn’t. Jane backpeddled through
the doors, whatching as he lowered the crossbow. She finally hit a
corridor wall and had to make a choice, left or right. Impulsively
she chose right, just to keep moving. Her first animal instinct was
to put as much distance between herself and Phil as possible. But
he’d be expecting that, wouldn’t he? She couldn’t afford to do
the expected here.

She
knew this hospital, at least as well as he did, if not better, best
to use that to her advantage. Jane raced to the lobby she’d have to
pass through to get to the Appointment and Advice Call Center. At
least she’d be on the most familiar of territory there. The lobby
doors were chained shut and locked with a big black X sprayed on
them.

She
turned around without stopping and ran toward the woman’s OR
lockers. There was a laundry shute that emptied into a basement bin –
basement might not be locked. Locker room was locked off with a black
X, probably figured things could get in through the basement.

There
was a lab on second – she’d dated one of the techs – that had
windows and possibly useful chemicals, like hydro choloric acid, The
door to the stairwell was chained and locked. She whimpered, took out
her screwdriver and pried at the lock in a fit of useless rage. All
it accomplished was a deep gouge in the door. The hammer wouldn’t
do any better and it would probably break the machette. The whet
stone and fire starter were useless. Then it dawned on her,
custodian’s closets – cleaning supplies, chemicals. She slid
along the wall until she came to a likely door, no chain on it
either. Of course upon opening it she found nothing. It was bare to
the Formica finish. There weren’t even any fire extinguishers to be
had.

Jane
wasn’t getting anywhere without keys.

Then
she heard footsteps in the hall. “Let’s see, Jane are you the
frightened rabbit that runs as far and as fast as you can?” Phil
asked in a controlled soto voche. “Or were you clever and tried to
do the opposite, knowing I’d be looking for the rabbit?”

She’d
run out of time without a hiding place.

“Rabbit
or fox? Which is it Jane?”

Jane
tried to stop breathing and flattened herself against a corner wall.

The
footsteps were even and lightly placed. If she’d been running
around and panting she wouldn’t have heard them at all. Jane waited
for the footsteps to receed before squatting to use the whet stone on
her machette. She’d need to slice through a lot before this was
over because she was going to have to get those keys somehow.

Thinking
of surgical tools, Jane made her way back to the OR they had started
from. She moved the way she had learned to move on the streets
avoiding the CUDs, quick and light, no more sound than rustling
paper. Before she got there she reached the OR next to it and found
the chain and lock missing from the door handles. A metal bar slid in
their place. A piece of paper was taped to one of the doors and it
said “DARE YOU”.

She
suddenly recalled what Phil had said about having a, “whole room
full of,” CUDs in the next OR. What was he daring her to do and to
what end? Jane slid the bar out and cracked the door. The room was
just as well lit as the first OR. There were dozens of gurneys, each
with a CUD strapped to it. The CUDs were in varying stages of decay
and surgical “study”. All of them squirming like bugs on pins.
One, a female, was shoved to the front of the room, it was a fresh
CUD, struggling viciously against its bonds. The strap that would
have gone over its head was missing so the thing whipped it back and
forth and banged it up and down with rabid fury. Spittle and foam
flew in arcs and the teeth snapped so fiercely that it had bit its
own lips and tongue. Strung on a choker of ribbon around its neck was
a key ring. The keys jingled with each violent jerk of the head.

“Son
of a bitch,” whispered Jane. She’d have to get those keys, and
she’d have to do it quick, because if he didn’t find her soon,
he’d know where to look for her. She took the bar with her into the
room, hefting it in one hand, the machette in the other. She’d have
to make a quiet kill in order to avoid giving away her location. So
that left out bludgeoning the thing with the metal bar. Fine, so use
the machette. She set the bar aside, gripped the machette double
handed and brought it down on the CUD’s head. Because it had been
whipping around so fast, instead of dead center she’d hit it about
one third from the edge. At least it pinned it to the gurney. She
quickly slid out her screw driver, feeling the thing’s teeth grind
against her arm padding. Her heart was beating so hard she thought
her ears would burst from the sound.

Then
in an instant the teeth had a full grip on her arm. They were chewing
awkwardly through the padding. She could see breaks in the smooth
cover opening to the stuffing beneath. Her palms went slick and the
screwdriver slid right down to the tip of the handle. If she pulled
out the machette to attack the CUD again the head would be free to
move and it would likely rip through her padding and into her arm.
Jane tighened her fingers on the screwdriver until her short
fingernails dug in to the cracked plastic handle. Milimeter by
milimeter she dragged it up into her palm. The CUD was so still and
concentrated on her arm that it presented a perfect target as Jane
brought the screwdriver up and into it’s eye socket. It stopped
chewing then.

Drawing
a shaky breath, she quickly grabbed the keys from the CUD’s neck.
She was backing out of the room when an idea hit her. It was an idea
with promise. But she had to move now. Later maybe. Right now she had
to figure out this piece to the puzzle. Because it was just a piece.
There was no way any of these opened the entrance door. What they did
open was the question. She hoped she hadn’t just risked her life
for nothing.

The
generator room. Interesting. First that the keys worked on anything
of value. Second, what did he imagine she might do with it? There was
the generator, of course, and a stockpile of propane and gasoline as
well. Things ticked in her head. Phil didn’t know about the fire
starter in her tool belt. But if she shut down the genny to put him
in the dark he’d know right where she was. She left the genny
alone, took some supplies with her, and locked up. It was hard going
and difficult to do quietly but she set the stuff up where it needed
to be. Then she weakened some straps with her machette and got out.

Jane
retreated a corridor away to hide. Seconds later Phil stalked past.
She was floored at the simplicity. Double handing her machette, she
brought it to bear on his neck.

“Drop
the crossbow.”

“Jane.
I knew you were special.” He casually dropped the crossbow.

“Kick
it aside.”

“So
smart.” He did as she asked.

“I
just sharpened this, Phil.”

“Why
not just kill me then?”

“I
need the keys.”

“Oh
and then
you’ll kill me.”

“What
you think you deserve, you sick bastard?”

“You
want to know what I think?”

Jane
felt a hard ankle hook around hers flipping her leg around until her
hips followed. The next thing she knew she was belly down on the
floor, but she wasn’t there long. Phil grabbed her up and held her
from behind, one hand gripping her Tae Kwon Do helmet the other
holding her own machette at her throat.

“Jane,
Jane, Jane. I was really hoping this would last longer. In the end
you’re really not all that smart are you?”

Jane’s
arms were still free, and her right carefully slid the hammer from
its tool belt loop. It was awkward, swinging backward, but she put as
much thrust into it as she possibly could and her aim proved true.
Phil made a tiny scream. The machette fell in a clatter and he
collapsed to the floor clutching his groin.

“How
ya’ like me now, bitch?” snarled Jane.

Then
she felt pain of her own. A crossbow bolt had sheared through her
shoulder padding and the meat of her shoulder. It wasn’t stuck
there, it had left a deep graze though. She could feel the blood
seeping between padding and skin. He was already setting another bolt
to fly. Jane ran, scooping up her machette on the way. She ran toward
the ORs, ran a little past them and waited.

In
a few minutes Phil came hobling, pretty fast considering what he’d
sustained, along after Jane. She could see he had about three
crossbow bolts left. He paused at OR number two as Jane had hoped he
would. She’d taken a pencil from one of the hospital desk cubicles
and scrawled a big 2 next to his “DARE YOU”.

He
looked so furious at that moment. She couldn’t have hoped for
better. With an angry swipe he removed the bar and went in with his
crossbow leveled. Jane darted forward and replaced the bar.

Jane
heard the commotion immediately. He must have shot three of them
first. Then it was left to avoiding and smashing. Finally he made it
back to the doors and smacked against them only to find they’d been
braced behind him.

“JANE!”

“Phil.”

“Let
me out!”

“Why?”

“I’ll
give you the keys.”

“Give
me the keys now.”

“You’ll
never let me out.”

“I
promise I will. I’ve never broken a promise.” It was true. She
never had.

There
was a gap under the doors just wide enough for the flattened group of
keys to slide through. Phil hesitated but in the end he had no other
choice. He pushed the keys to Jane.

She
nodded and said, “Good doing business with you Phil.” Then she
walked to the end of the gasoline trail and waited. She waited until
he’d been screaming for a good ten minutes before she sparked a
light with her fire starter. A flame that would travel into the OR
and up to the large flowing propane canister that would hopefully
explode, splattering dead flesh in tattered piles, Phil’s included.

“I win.”

It
was too bad about the promise. But there was a first time for
everything.

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